Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a composition for preventing or treating a psychiatric disorder comprising a phenyl carbamate compound and a method for preventing or treating a psychiatric disorder therewith.
Description of the Related Art
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders. These include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities. A number of psychiatric syndromes feature depressed mood as a main symptom. Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behavior, feelings and sense of well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, worried, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, hurt, or restless. The mood disorders are a group of disorders considered to be primary disturbances of mood. These include major depressive disorder (MDD; commonly called major depression or clinical depression) where a person has at least two weeks of depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all activities; and dysthymia, a state of chronic depressed mood, the symptoms of which do not meet the severity of a major depressive episode.
Another mood disorder, bipolar disorder, features one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood, cognition and energy levels, but may also involve one or more depressive episodes. When the course of depressive episodes follows a seasonal pattern, the disorder (major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, etc.) may be described as a seasonal affective disorder. Outside the mood disorders: borderline personality disorder commonly features depressed mood; adjustment disorder with depressed mood is a mood disturbance appearing as a psychological response to an identifiable event or stressor, in which the resulting emotional or behavioral symptoms are significant but do not meet the criteria for a major depressive episode and posttraumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that sometimes follows trauma, is commonly accompanied by depressed mood. Bipolar disorder has been known for decades as a chronic mental disorder, with high relapse rates, most of times incapacitating, supposedly having a neurobiological substrate. Although the understanding of neurobiology has expanded in the last years, little is known about the real pathophysiological mechanisms of bipolar disorder. One of the models that has been applied to bipolar disorder is kindling, taken from the model of epilepsy, in which the repetition of crises would cause a process of neuronal sensitization, leading to a progressive threshold decrease, with the increase in the recurrence of epileptic crises (manic). Animal model studies suggest that this process may involve a series of alterations in the genic expression and second messengers In fact, pharmacological studies have been consistent with these findings, demonstrating the action of antidepressants and mood stabilizers in several intracellular mechanisms which involve the regulation of genic expression and cellular plasticity (Benicio Noronha Frey et al., Rev Bras Pisquiatr 2004; 26(3):180-8).
Anxiety is an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints and rumination. It is the subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over something unlikely to happen, such as the feeling of imminent death. Pentylenetetrazol (PTZ), a GABA(A) receptor antagonist and prototypical anxiogenic drug, has been extensively utilized in animal models of anxiety. PTZ produces a reliable discriminative stimulus which is largely mediated by the GABA(A) receptor (Jung M E et al., Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2002 June; 26(4):429-39). Anxiety is not the same as fear, which is felt about something realistically intimidating or dangerous and is an appropriate response to a perceived threat. Anxiety is a mood. When it becomes a mental disorder, that is, characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry, it is diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD occurs without an identifiable triggering stimulus. It is called generalized because the remorseless worries are not focused on any specific threat; they are, in fact, often exaggerated and irrational. Subtypes of anxiety disorders are phobias, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and Posttraumatic stress disorder
Throughout this application, various publications and patents are referred and citations are provided in parentheses. The disclosures of these publications and patents in their entities are hereby incorporated by references into this application in order to fully describe this invention and the state of the art to which this invention pertains.